A lot of Rigel VII, we shot on the AR screen.
We actually, as a cast, stood there for a while
just looking at this environment
that had been created for us
and marveling at how beautiful it was.
This is Rigel VII.
Please, we must hide ourselves.
So, we know from The Original Series
that Pike had an ill-fated visit
to the planet of Rigel VII.
Things didn't go so well.
[Number One] Bridge to Captain Pike.
Apologies for the interruption,
but we received a sensitive communication from Command.
It's about Rigel VII.
Rigel VII was a really interesting asset
because that had been seen before in TOS.
There was this very famous shot of the castle
which was a matte painting
with a piece of physical scenery
with the artist walking through.
That visual effect of Rigel VII in The Original Series
is kind of very evocative and impressive.
Even today when you look at it you're like,
"Ooh, that's cool."
You know, and it's like it was, weirdly,
its own kind of elusive mystery.
There was a lot of debate
as to how much of that matte painting
we want to bring into our world,
into our production wall.
We wound up sticking pretty true to the original,
or I thought it was a pretty good homage to the original.
We kept sort of that hint of violet throughout the lighting.
The moon, big in the distance.
So we looked, obviously, really closely at that
and we wanted to respect that
but we wanted to make a much bigger landscape.
And we decided to make it a snowbound landscape.
So we made the landscape much bigger
and we made the castle enormous.
The castle actually developed
from Jonathan Lee's wonderful mind,
where he presented a couple options
that actually were more based on the AR wall itself
trying to show off the scale and scope of the planet.
You know, we created the castle front,
and we had a snowy surface, we had torches.
We manufactured all of these rocks
and built some really cool cages too
that we had outside of the castle.
And once you see it tie in with the AR screens
it's like you're there.
And that's really exciting.
Just incredible how they can do that.
I'm still blown away by how that is possible,
to make it look and feel like you're actually there.
La'An.
You all right?
We do have a few different locations on that planet
that we go to that show us different skylines.
It's a rather Scottish approach to AR.
You get great value for money if you do this.
You build one and you get three sets out of it.
[Guard] Get going. Move it.
What is this place?
Outside of our hero sets,
we shot in this beautiful cathedral church.
We were on location for, you know,
I think it was for a day or two,
where we had created this beautiful interior castle,
and we brought in all these medieval elements.
I saw the cathedral kind of before it was all set up.
And then afterwards I was like,
"Whoa, this is amazing. Incredible."
This isn't a normal planet, Pike.
Haven't you noticed how hard it is to think?
[M'Benga] Captain?
What are you doing?
Zach, what are you doing?
Zach, you're making a mistake.
Rigel VII changes people.
I'm gonna have fun watching it work its magic on you.
The loss of memory, it's such an insidious nemesis.
You wipe a slate, right?
Like because you don't know who you are,
you don't know why you're there.
How do you deal with that?
So it was a chance to play.
It was a chance to ask certain questions.
It was a chance to really work in each moment separately.
This woman, she's my friend?
I can feel it, now.
This show is not prepared like a typical television show.
You know, there's a kind of tradition in television
which is like, "Well, we'll wait till the script's done.
We'll see what's really in the script.
We'll do it when we get the script."
I mean, you'd shoot nothing on this show.
New systems of functioning and preparedness are required
because you can't wait for the script to be finished
because an AR asset has a lot of lead time.
With something like Rigel VII,
we take the matte painting from The Original Series
and then everybody in the art department
and story and AR start building what's gonna happen
inside and outside that object.
Until we sort of built it out
and then as we looked at it, we're like,
"Yeah, we can't quite really do it exactly that way.
The scale is off."
And so we started evolving it
and the world and the story all at once,
and ergo, the return to Rigel VII.